


Something Filled Up My Heart With Nothing

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Coldridge Prison (Dishonored), F/M, Grief/Mourning, High Chaos Corvo Attano, OR IS HE, Starvation, Torture, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24723148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: Condemned to Coldridge Prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Corvo Attano faces a horrific present, a dreadful future, and the darkness of his own mind—and the terror of what it will take to survive.
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	Something Filled Up My Heart With Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually one of the first fics I wrote in this fandom. I just sort of held onto it for a while, until it felt right to post it. 
> 
> It came out of the fact that Corvo’s time in Coldridge is profoundly formative in terms of his character and psyche and likely informs literally every other choice he makes in the game itself—and yet we know very little about it other than that it was awful. It ought to be a trauma he never really gets over, yet it’s also never really addressed. In particular, I feel like how he processes it would have to be a huge part of what sends him in a High or Low Chaos direction. So I wanted to play around with it. 
> 
> (I also headcanon Corvo’s interactions with the Outsider as having begun much earlier than the moment the Outsider formally introduces himself; Corvo must have caught his attention long before that.) 
> 
> Title comes from [”Wake Up” by Arcade Fire,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJRPPUr1yic) which I imagine beginning to play at the very end in the movie of this in my head. Just feel like that crash of an opening fits great.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and that this provides a little distraction in such a generally difficult time. Thanks so much for reading. ❤️❤️

Corvo spends the first night in total silence.

He doesn't pace—that comes later. He doesn't move at all. He sits on the concrete slab they've given him for a bed and he listens to the howls and curses echoing through the cell block, criminals and madmen and demonic combinations of both, and after a while they fade into a distant hum which he finds perversely soothing. When guards come by to jeer at him, their voices are swallowed into that hum like a stream joining a river, and he doesn't care what they say, although later—after many other things have happened—he will.

They call him a coward. They call him a murderer. They call him a piece of scum, and they call him a worthless smear of shit. He hears the words but the sense of them doesn't penetrate his mind, as if they're speaking in a language he recognizes but doesn't understand.

They spit at him, and two or three of them do so with enough force to reach him. Once a glob of spittle hits his face. He doesn't wipe it away.

There are lights outside, but they never seem to touch the interior of the cell itself. The only illumination is moonlight, a single beam of it lancing down through the dark from a window that appears miles above him. He watches it travel across the floor until the moon sets and it disappears.

He doesn't sleep. To the extent that he's afraid of anything anymore—and he's not certain he is or can be—he might be afraid of that. What's waiting for him in that deeper darkness. What he might see.

~

Standing with Jessamine on the balcony, watching the moon rise over the rooftops and the chimney stacks. Her skin was pale and the light bleached it as white as a Tyvian ice floe. She was quiet, thinking, a little solemn. He was behind her, and he curled his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair. Tugged it loose. It cascaded around her shoulders like a black waterfall. The night was unusually warm and she smelled of sweat and chrysanthemums, and he breathed her in, and when she covered his arm with her small, strong hand and leaned back against him, he wondered if he would ever love anyone as much as he loved her in that moment.

Of course he would. But like so many things, that was later.

He had everything. He wanted nothing more. He would never be anything but Corvo Attano, Royal Protector and secret consort, and that was more than enough. He didn't want any other titles. He didn't want royalty. He didn't want a throne. He wanted only this, only her, until they grew old and gray and ugly together, and then he wanted to die in her arms.

The darkness flickers.

_Isn't that the very height of irony._

~

Morning comes, anemic and cold. They feed him; the bread is moldy and the water is stale, and the thin slice of meat is crawling with maggots. He stares at it. He stares down at his hands. Her blood is still under his nails, dried around his cuticles.

He lifts one to his mouth and sucks at his thumb until he can't taste the sweet copper anymore, and he drops his hand limply between his knees to join the other. When he moves his jaw he feels the stretch of the dried spit on his cheek.

The rats creep in and gnaw at the food. At some point someone takes it away. They tell him that he better not try to starve himself before they make his head roll, because all of Dunwall should get the treat of watching that.

_Personally I don't care that much, honestly, you filthy killer. However you end up dead, makes no nevermind to me._

He's in hearty agreement.

~

Does he want to die? He's not certain. He gets up, walks slowly from the far end of the cell to the bars and back again, counting the steps for no particular reason. Establishing the dimensions of his new world. Forward and back and side to side, and standing beneath the window and looking up, the reek of the latrine in his nose and the scent of rosewater in his memory.

The sun is setting. It's a brilliant, furious red, the color of a new wound.

Does he want to die?

Someone is being forced down the block. They're not cooperating—the scuffle of boots and a hard grunt of pain when a blow lands. He half turns his head and catches a blur of shadow as they pass his cell; to his right the door grinds open and clangs shut.

To his left: _Ay, me good mate, guess who you've got for a neighbor? Coldridge Prison entertains the nobles, so it does. Lords and empress-killers, all hoity-toity._

Slow drawl. Not a Dunwall accent, though he can't place it, and also it doesn't fucking matter. _Is that so? Is he in a bad way, dear chap? Do tell me he is._

_Hasn't said nothin’ since they stuck him in there yesterday. I spect he's not enjoyin’ the ball, nosir. Not one ickle bit._

_How lovely, my good man. How deuced delightful._

But he wasn't enjoying the real balls, is the thing. He never enjoyed any of it. Never felt like he belonged. He learned to tolerate it, and it learned to tolerate him, but the way they all looked at him, the things he heard whispered behind his back by people who didn't know how keen his hearing was and how very good he could be at making himself unseen.

Everyone knows that Serkonans are attractive in an exotic kind of way, they're marvelous dancers and their beaches are enchanting and their food is to die for, but you don't invite Karnacan street urchins to the Imperial Court no matter how well they use a sword. You don't make lords of them. They don't stand beside the throne.

They don't bed the Empress.

He didn't belong. Hasn't belonged anywhere in years. Except with _her,_ and now she's gone forever and he's here, and what these two chortling idiots don't remotely understand is that he probably belongs here better than anywhere else anymore.

Will his head belong on the chopping block?

_Do you want to die?_

He slumps back against the wall, slides down it onto the gritty floor and covers his face with his hands, and then covers his ears until the night falls down like a stone and the voices are quiet at last.

~

More rotting food. He didn't notice it when it was brought. He stares at it for a while. He doesn't think he sleeps but he doesn’t notice it taken away either, and regardless, in the morning it's gone.

~

He has to eat.

No. No, he doesn't _have_ to do anything of the kind, but it's his third day without food and he can feel himself weakening. Whoever took away the last attempt at feeding him did leave the water, and he had a little of that—sour-tasting and bad-smelling and he's not altogether certain that no one pissed in it—and it feels as if it's still sitting in his stomach, a shallow lake inside an immense cave.

Hollow.

He doesn't have to eat, but if he doesn't want to die quite yet, he should. He can go a long time without much food; he was never actually starving in Karnaca but after his father died there were some lean months, and he trained himself to ignore his growling belly and take only the minimum of what would sustain him. He knows he could go on for a while like this. Another week. Two. Perhaps longer. After long enough he won't be able to do much more than lie on his slab and gaze up at nothing—but is that really such an unappealing prospect?

_Do you want to die, Corvo?_

In the evening they bring him another tray; no maggoty meat this time, only more of the fuzzy blue-green bread and another pitcher of water. He sits in front of it for what might be an hour or might be no longer than ten minutes. Eventually a guard comes, lingers, runs a club back and forth across the bars and asks him sneeringly if the cuisine isn’t to his liking. If perhaps he'd prefer the kitchen to prepare him some blood ox sausage and roasted potatoes, a glass of Tyvian red, fruit tarts with rosewater jelly for desert and a cigar.

During the leanest times he ate food out of dumpsters. If you can cast off your pride it’s not nearly so bad as one might think. He learned where and when the freshest scraps could be found. Tasty, in fact. Almost as good as walking in and asking for a table, his friend Ricard used to say.

He's alone when he finally picks up the bread, holds it in his trembling hands and brings it to his lips. Sinks his teeth into it.

It has all the taste and consistency of ashes. He eats every bite.

~

_Do you want to die?_

Not yet.

~

So after that he settles into a routine.

Get up. Eat what there is, what he can bear to—he never touches the meat when they give it to him. Do nothing for a while. Think as little as possible. The pitted wall opposite the slab is good enough as a focal point, at least at first; it is, in fact, decorated here and there by the scrawls of previous occupants. Defiance and hate and scorn, and now and then genuine sorrow. _They arent offin me for halfa what I done. Watch take my head, my soul went to the Outsider in a game of Nancy. Briney Pete was here. And Hank the Dasher screwd his sister. Lizzy Stride sucks the Outsiders cock. I didn't do it and they know it. Betty I love you. They wont ever stop the rat plage._

_Fuck the Empres in her loose smely cunt._

He only realizes once he's examining his bleeding knuckles that he's punched the wall. The prisoner to his left cackles and crows something he can't make out. After that he doesn't look at the wall much.

Sleep, a little. A couple of hours. Bad sleep. Nightmares he doesn't remember except that they were bad as well.

He looks at nothing. He gets up and paces, sits down, paces again. Gazes up at a window that might as well be a ribbon of light rather than a glimpse of the world outside; he can't see a fucking thing. Except that light; he watches it slide across the sky from color to shifting color until it dims and dies, and then he watches the moon. It's waning, he thinks. He's fairly sure he remembers. It was full when he was still on the water, leaning on the deck railing and listening to the crash of the waves against the hull and allowing his thoughts to drift to her and the bad news he had to deliver to her. That disk rising heavy and round over him like a blind, milky eye. The urge to hurl the letter overboard and lie to her and tell her that everything would be all right.

Stars, couldn't the last thing he said to her have been something good. Something that would make her smile.

Even if it wasn't true.

He didn't say _anything_ to her. That's the thing; he handed over the letter without a word. Couldn't think of anything to say. He doesn't even know what the last words he spoke to her were. It was before he left. He doesn't know when he last saw her truly smile. He doesn't remember if the smile was for him.

He's trying not to think but the thoughts wash in on him like the sea into the Flooded District. He can erect only the flimsiest walls against them. He's eating now but he's weak. He was weak before they put him in here. He was too weak to save her. If he was stronger, faster, smarter, she wouldn't have died.

He's punching the wall again. His knuckles are deeply split; through the blood and broken skin he glimpses pale pinkish bone. He left smears against the concrete. His own kind of scrawl. He can't imagine writing anything about how he was here—this is the only mark he deserves to make, and it's no use, because he could never bleed enough to bring her back.

It's no fucking use at all.

~

It occurs to him on the fourth day that he hasn't yet wept for her.

He should. One should cry over something like this. He wept when he found out his mother was dead—huddled in a shadowy corner of one of Dunwall Tower’s reading rooms with the letter crumpled on the floor beside him and hoping against hope that no one would see him before he regained control of himself. He was almost nineteen and it was humiliating to be sobbing like a child, only when he read the words— _It gives me great pain to inform you that etc. etc._ —it was as if every bit of the homesickness he'd been keeping at bay crashed in on him, the seawall crumbling to wet dust. Dunwall was chilly and gray and smoky in a way Karnaca never had been and he missed the sun and the warm sea and food that wasn't boiled into tastelessness and hot nights full of music, and no one here was his friend and no one seemed to want to even talk to him, and he was lonely and he just wanted to go home and now his mother was dead and he was never going to see her again and he wasn't even with her when it happened. And he felt like a child. He felt weak and stupid. Hopeless.

Then suddenly someone knelt beside him and she was there, her little hand sliding into his and her eyes solemn and gentle, and shining in the firelight. She didn't speak. She was simply there with him and she radiated no judgment. Only kindness.

And there and then he thought this might be a friend, of a sort. Even more of a child than he was in that moment—but really, she didn't seem so childish to him. Anyway, he wasn't in a position to be picky.

 _Picky,_ over an empress.

He shakes his head fiercely. Maybe he could shake the tears out of himself. But nothing comes. He's dry.

He can't even mourn her.

~

After another few days they don't spend quite so much time jeering at him. He senses that they're getting bored with him, especially given that he doesn't so much as speak to them and in fact barely looks at them, barely moves. If he reacted even to the tiniest extent he would be entertaining and they could view it as provocation and be crueler to him, but a silent lump of a man is no sport at all.

Which is probably why, another couple of days later, they drag him into the yard and beat him bloody.

He already knows what's going to happen when they open his cell and haul him out, or he can guess the outlines of it. Six of them, all with either clubs or swords drawn, but he doesn't resist. It's not that he's trying to avoid it becoming worse, although if he fought it undoubtedly would be; it's simply that there's no point, and he's tired.

They fling him into the dirt and the ones with clubs go to work.

Instinctively, he's curling up, trying to protect his belly and groin, trying to shield his head. But he's not trying very hard, and they kick him until he uncurls, kick the air out of his lungs. He doesn't scream; he makes no sound above a harsh grunt, and that seems to enrage them even further, and they hit him harder. He's aware that there's pain and that it's immense, but that awareness is distant and vague. He's observing himself from outside, although there's a great deal he doesn't see. He can't discern the details of their features, and in any case he won't remember them later so he won't know who to fear. He doesn't know whether it's day or night; the lights cast across the yard are too ruthless and too blinding.

They ease up. He knows it's temporary. He's bemused to discover that he's trying to push himself up on his hands and knees, spitting blood and what might be a tooth. What is he hoping to accomplish? There are barrels and hound crates in the yard, trash strewn around, places to hide. He would play hide and seek with Emily on the grounds, in corridors and chambers. She often found him but he could never seem to find her.

Little shadow flitting between the lights, under the staircase, laughing.

A well-placed boot slams him onto his side and a club sends him tumbling into the dark.

~

There are eyes in the darkness. Inside it… and somehow part of it. Made of it.

_Aren't there?_

~

Awake, sprawled on the slab. He stirs, tries to raise his head, and the world lurches and he turns quick enough to vomit onto the floor and not onto himself. Not much more than bile anyway, scorching and bitter in his throat.

Someone he can't see chuckles.

It's obvious, what they'll claim if anyone even cares enough to raise a fuss. He made an attempt to escape, of course. He refused to be subdued. Regrettable, to be sure, but they had no choice.

He knows all about polite, transparent, ass-covering lies which everyone courteously pretends to believe. You don't spend two decades in court without becoming well-acquainted with those. You don't do the things he's done.

He doesn't blame them.

~

Wonder of wonders, he doesn't seem to be too severely injured. Either they were surprisingly careful or he got surprisingly lucky, but regardless. He did indeed break a tooth, though he didn't lose it entirely, and his ribs hurt badly enough that he suspects several of them might be cracked, his wrist is sprained and both eyes are puffy and he almost certainly has a concussion, but otherwise. Given enough time, he’ll heal.

Whether he wants to or not.

“Gave you a good thumpin’, eh?” The voice from the cell to his left actually sounds almost sympathetic. “Right bastards, they are. When they tire of jerkin’ each other off, they need to get their jollies somewhere.”

He says nothing. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the wall and breathing very carefully. He has nothing to say.

“If you ever get a chance to get your own back, mate, I recommend you take it. Never mind them bein’ harder on you, they'll do that regardless. I imagine you've never done time, eh? No, you wouldn't have. I been in here three times now, so you pay mind to ol’ Skinnyflint Jack. I knows the score. You spy an opening to thump right back, you do it.”

He closes his eyes. There is absolutely no point in arguing. Anyway, the room spins with his eyes closed and once more he feels like vomiting, and they've already threatened that if he does it again they'll make him clean it up with his tongue, and he sees no reason not to believe them.

“You do it,” Skinnyflint Jack goes on, his voice positively jovial. “You won't have too many more chances, coz pretty soon they’ll be rollin’ your head across the yard, which I must say I'm looking forward to, you poxy fuckin’ plague rat. What you deserve, ain't it?”

He can't cry. But he does want to laugh.

~

Two weeks. Perhaps three. Perhaps more. He does heal, slowly. They don't beat him again; possibly someone did care and had words with them. Things settle into a monotony—never much better, never much worse. The hours and days begin to run together. He wonders when they will, in fact, roll his head across the yard. What they're waiting for. Why they don't just get on with it.

He pays enough attention to what goes on beyond the bars that he does begin to pick up snatches of news. The occupants of the cells on either side are released or moved and the voices change, and the new ones must be old friends because they chat to each other with amiable familiarity. The guards, also, talk as they wander through the block, and the sound carries. Burrows has appointed himself Lord Regent. He's cracking down on the infected and infectious, erecting more Walls of Light, expanding the Watch’s control. Sealing off some districts, clearing others. It's getting bad in the streets. The plague is getting worse. Even the guards sound increasingly worried.

No one has found Emily.

Now that he's given in and is thinking in earnest, at least about particular things, and without much else to do _but_ think, he's beginning to entertain particular suspicions.

Some of this strikes him as awfully convenient.

A relatively quiet month, and they come for him again, and after that he's not suspicious anymore. Because incredibly, they tell him everything.

~

At first he thinks he might be in for another beating—regarding which he feels only weary resignation. Then they strap him into the chair and he knows he's in for something much worse.

Feels an actual stab of fear.

It's Burrows. He's not surprised at this. Burrows, standing behind a desk on a raised platform in front of him and studying something that Corvo can't see. Compared to the rest of the prison, this place has a perverse air of gentility about it; the glossy wood of the desk, the massive painting behind it. Someone else is in the room—outside his field of vision, and they've strapped his head down too so he's unable to turn it.

He does see the poker heating in the brazier.

Finally Burrows looks up. Smiles, relaxed, as if this is a routine meeting of state and they're all friends and colleagues here. Steps out from behind the desk and descends to him, regards him carefully. He leans closer, makes a face, pulls back. Well he might; Corvo hasn't properly bathed since they first threw him into the cell, and there's only so much he can do with a rag torn from his shirt and the water they give him. He's covered in grime. His teeth feel fuzzy. He can dig his fingers into his matted hair and pick out lice.

He's repulsive. His very presence is offensive to this man.

Outsider’s eyes, he actually smiles.

“We've given you ample time to think on your… situation.” Burrows clasps his hands behind his back and walks slowly around to the side of the chair, makes a circuit. “You're not a stupid man and I see no reason to keep the truth from you, especially not when there's no chance in the Void that anyone will believe you. I'm assuming you've gathered by now that you're being kept alive only because you might be useful to us, though I'll confess… The timing of your return wasn't ideal.” He shoots Corvo a thin smile. “You almost mucked it all up, _Lord Protector._ Turns out it might have been a fortunate twist of fate after all.”

Corvo stares. Doesn't speak. He's honestly not certain what they want him to say anyway—although he senses that they want him to say something. You might torture someone for the sheer pleasure of it, to be sure, but usually there are additional reasons.

“The stars provide for the righteous man.” Campbell, somewhere behind him. Again, he's entirely unsurprised. “And I assure you, Corvo, we _are_ righteous men. We have only the best interests of the Empire at heart. But we do need something from you. A very simple thing, really.”

Pause. Silence. He assumes they'll tell him.

“Confess,” Burrows says softly. “The people need you to. They need the nightmare to end. Confess to what the entire city knows you did. Confess officially and fully, and satisfy them.”

Campbell steps closer, into view, though his face is cast in shadow, lined ruddy by the brasier’s glow. “Your sinful soul must be troubled. Ease it. I'll even absolve you of your guilt. You see, the Abbey is generous in its forgiveness to those who sincerely repent.”

Corvo licks his cracked lips. For the first time in weeks, because why the fuck but also why the fuck not, he speaks, his voice rough and husky for lack of use.

“You'll just kill me anyway.”

“Oh, of course.” Burrows nods. “We’ll have to. We can't let the murderer of the Empress _live,_ surely you can understand that. But there's also the matter of the late Empress’s _poor lost daughter._ Her wellbeing. Her safety.” He smiles again. “You see, she's not so lost after all.”

Which is when Corvo starts to scream.

It simply breaks in him. It breaks open. It was already cracked, the stone casing behind which the rage boiled and seethed, and now the crack widens and it crumbles and the rage explodes outward, huge and volcanic. He throws himself wildly against the straps, screams until his throat is raw, screams that he'll kill them if they harm her, he'll fucking kill them, he'll get out and he'll kill them and before he kills them he’ll slaughter their entire families in front of them, all their friends, burn their houses to the ground and piss in the ashes, kill them slow, inch by inch and bit by bit until they're begging for him to finish it and he'll love every fucking second of it, and if they kill him first he’ll claw his way out of the Void and come for them and feed them to the fucking rats, _he will KILL. THEM._

He's still screaming when someone presses the poker against his bare arm and he scarcely notices, and he's screaming when Burrows, expression unsettled, waves a hand and they unstrap him and haul him—struggling, _finally_ struggling, so ferociously it takes four of them to hold him—and he's screaming with the last of his ragged voice when they toss him back in his cell, and he flings himself against the bars and screams and screams.

When he can't scream anymore he slumps to his knees and leans his head against the cold iron, and at last he can cry.

~

He cries for a while—heaving and shuddering, eventually prostrate, face pressed against the slimy floor as his hooked fingers scrabble uselessly at it, all scorching tears and snot. It’s unstoppable. It almost feels good.

Then he sleeps.

~

And there are eyes in the dark.

~

They're going to kill him anyway. No matter what he does, they're going to kill him. He knew but now he has it straight from them and he knows.

_Do you want to die, Corvo?_

_Well, do you?_

~

They give him a week to cool off and they do it again, and this time they're clearly ready for him to lose control, with five guards in the room and firmer straps, but it's not like before. He won't give it to them, the satisfaction of watching him break. Before, he had neither the strength nor the inclination to be defiant, and this might be that, but really it's not even so much defiance as it is hatred more vast and all-encompassing than he's ever known. _Confess_ and he says nothing. They burn him and he yells and says nothing. They demand it over and over, with mounting exasperation, and he says nothing.

They don't do it themselves. They have someone to do the hurting for them now, a man broad and tall as a tower with a face like one single massive scar. He smiles cheerfully as he works, his twisted lips squirming and writhing like gray slugs.

Corvo’s arm is a blistered mess by the time they're done, so after another week, when they bring him back in, they start on his chest. They string him up from the hook that dangles from the ceiling and use a braided many-tailed whip, and the welts rise on his back and break open and seep blood. They drive a sharpened chisel into him with a hammer. They push needles under his fingernails. He howls with agony but says nothing. They're not bothering to conceal their frustration, and he enjoys that, and when Burrows stares into his eyes he stares back until the man looks away.

He meant it. He will fucking kill them. If it weren't for the straps and the ropes he would seize that poker and shove it down their throats and skewer them like rats for the grill, crack their skulls open with that chisel, puncture their eyes with those needles, whip the flesh from their bones.

By the Void, it would feel so fucking good.

~

One day in his cell afterward, hurting so much everywhere, it comes to him in a flash of revelation and the relief is overwhelming, and he nearly slaps himself in the forehead for not realizing it earlier.

They're bluffing. About Emily. They're completely bluffing, they must be. They won't kill her, and they won't hurt her. They can't. They _need_ her. Corvo Attano is not a politician but he’s a quick study and he's spent enough time around politicians to pick up a trick or two, and in all likelihood they need her if any of this is going to work for them.

The city is on the precipice of anarchy. It was already edging close to that when he left and its toes must be hanging over by now. Burrows has never been popular and they won't accept him forever. They won't accept anyone but her. If they have to settle for anyone else, it'll all go to pieces. And there is no one else. Eventually they put the rightful heir on the throne or they'll be rulers of corpses and burning rubble.

They need her. So she doesn't need him.

Thank the stars, she doesn't need him.

~

The next time they strap him down in the chair he merely laughs at them. That time it's especially bad.

~

Two weeks after that, they stop feeding him.

At first he thinks it might simply be that they've forgotten. That's happened before, missed meals. It doesn't trouble him; he eats when they do feed him but his hunger doesn't bother him anymore. But there's one missed meal and then another, and another, while he hears the scrape of trays in the cells next door, and by the second day he understands what's happening, and that there won't be any more food. Not until he gives them what they want.

The poker didn't work, and neither did the whip or the hammer or the needles, and they can't make good on their threats to Emily.

So they're trying something new.

~

He makes it through one week. Two. Then he starts to genuinely feel it, something more than the gnawing, relentless emptiness. A deeper emptiness, a tremor in his bones. He's survived infection after festering infection, but the ones he has now throb more angrily than they did before, oozing thick pus, and they seem to sap what energy he has. It's hard to get up. It's hard to pace the cell. Yet he can't seem to keep still. He's jittery, full of anger thin as a blade. He feels like a hound that might snap at anyone foolish enough to come near.

No one does. Whenever he sleeps he wakes up to find water, and that's all.

It continues. The jittery feeling subsides and he's very tired. He doesn't hurt much anymore; the pain is merely a low and persistent ache. The cell has always been chilly but he's stricken with waves of merciless cold and he curls up and shivers, and then he doesn't shiver anymore. His body loosens.

_Do you want to die?_

He no longer has any idea how long it's been going on. He feels as if he's sinking gradually into himself. He doesn't think about food. He doesn't think about much of anything. He lies on the slab, on the floor, and feels the last remaining blisters burst and the welts scab over, the fires of the infections burn themselves out as if his body is providing them no more fuel, and he feels the bones more and more prominent beneath his skin.

How long does it take someone to die this way? How much time does he have left? He doesn't know.

_Do you want to die, Corvo? Is that what you want?_

He lifts his head and he's dizzy and his blood turns to water. He manages to get to the latrine and not much more than that. After a while he practically has to crawl between it and the slab. He can still make it to the water they leave for him. That he does it even when it becomes this difficult is an answer to a question he's asking himself over and over.

_Do you?_

Maybe.

~

Is it really him asking the question?

Or is it someone else?

~

He sees things, hears things. Wonderful. Terrible. Someone is in here with him. That little shadow dancing around the cell, her musical laughter, inviting him to play when he's feeling better. Warm hands stroking his cheeks, brushing his hair back from his brow. The charmingly sardonic curve of her smile, lips brushing his. The smell of her hair. Small arms wrapped tight around his waist, small head pressed against his chest. It's all right. They love him. They love him and they forgive him. They know he did his best. It’s not his fault.

His fault that he failed. That he fucking _failed_. Their twisted faces, their accusingly pointing fingers, scorn, contempt. Hatred. He's worthless. He couldn't do the one job he was given. As a lover, as a father, as a protector, worthless. He let one be slaughtered and the other be stolen and the world has fallen to ruin, all because he failed. He's good for nothing. He's a waste. He’s scum. He's shit. He should hurry up and die.

_Do you want to?_

He covers his face and soundlessly he cries.

~

_Do you want to die, Corvo?_

The voice is smooth, low. Somehow familiar. He stirs and blinks up at the form hovering above him, both silhouetted and illuminated by the waxing moon: sharply elegant features, pale skin, dark hair, the curve of lips even more sardonic than hers.

Eyes as black as nothing.

 _You should decide. You're running out of time. Do you want to die? Or do you want to hang on a little longer?_ A slender young man sitting beside him, bending over him—but this is not a man. This is not a human being. He never genuinely believed before now but he knows who—what—this is. He knows he should be terrified.

He's not.

Later he will not remember this. Later he will believe their second meeting is the first.

_I can't make the choice for you. But personally, if I were you… I'd try to hang on. See how this ends. Because, Corvo, it might not end the way you expect. It might end much better for you. Or it might end much, much worse._

_You made certain promises. I think you might like to keep them. But the decision can only be yours._

_So do you want to die, Corvo?_

The sharp scrabble-scuttle of tiny feet across his bare skin, a weight on his chest, the tickle of whiskers. He doesn't think. His hand snaps up and there's a squeal and a desperate wriggle. Needle teeth sink into his thumb and he disregards the pain, and he disregards what it could mean. It doesn't mean that. He won't get the plague. The plague has concluded that he's not worth the trouble and passed him by.

This won't kill him.

He lifts it to his mouth. For a second the struggling and the squeaking intensify when he digs his teeth into its soft, fat belly and rips, and blood pours onto his tongue, hot and sweet and so, so delicious. Then it goes limp.

It's possible that he's weeping as he eats the rat. Every bite fuels the rage, the hate. With every bite the strength floods back into his veins. He eats it all: the guts, the fur, and he cracks open the bones to suck at the marrow. He eats the eyes and he eats the brain, and he crushes the heart between his molars like an overripe grape. He eats everything, licks his fingers clean, and throws the splintered bones out of the cell at a passing guard’s boots.

When the guard looks at him, eyes wide and jaw dropped, he grins with bloody teeth.

_Do you want to die, Corvo?_

Fuck, no.

~

They start feeding him again.

~

The torture goes on. He doesn't care, and he's beginning to suspect that they don't either, that the torture is a kind of rote performance that they feel obliged to keep up without expecting anything from it. He's positive by now: Emily doesn't need him, but even if they do, what utility he has is highly limited. Over and over they demand his confession and he doesn't give them one. Over and over they send him, seared and bruised and bleeding, back to his cell.

There's another beating. Two. They're vicious and during the second one his ribs are cracked again and his shoulder and jaw dislocated, his nose broken for the second time. He gets through it. He gets better.

He still makes an effort to bathe. If anything he makes more of an effort than before. He kneels in the dimness, stripped to the waist with the rag damp and clammy in his hand, and he looks down at the mass of scars his body has become. He thinks of the globe in her study, the craggy outlines of the continents emerging from the smooth expanse of the sea. The topography. The millions of years of incomprehensible violence which produced it.

Which shapes it even now.

He moves. Works. Planks his legs and torso and pushes himself up from the floor over and over, one-handed. Also one-handed—first one and then the other—using the bars to lift his feet off the ground and hold himself there for as long as he can. He does other things. He's creative. He makes a kind of sport of himself, experimenting with what his limbs can do in a tight space, how they can press back the barriers. He practically climbs the walls just to see if he can.

He feels his muscles, gone flabby with months of confinement, transforming into something leaner and harder and _stronger_ than they've ever been.

The date of his execution is set, and he's informed of it, and he nods as if he's being informed of the weather. They move him into a cell reserved for the dead men yet walking, and the barred window is lower and wider and faces the yard. From here he can see the executioner’s block. He looks at it for a long time.

_Do you want to die?_

He's already answered the question, but it might be worth it to keep asking. Just to check in now and then.

~

The night before they're going to kill him, there's the note and the key.

For an uncountable length of time, he kneels by the bars and reads the note over and over, just to make sure he's got it right. Examines the key nestled into his palm. Reads the note again, word by word, and rocks back on his heels and meditates on it for a while.

So many things in the last six months haven't surprised him, and this doesn't either. If anything it feels like something he should have expected.

_This might not end the way you expect._

Voices outside, discussing his execution. Discussing his imminent death. He slides the key into the lock and eases the cell door open, creeps like a rat to the table and curls his fingers around the grip of the sword. He lifts it and weighs the blade, turns it this way and that, slashes it experimentally through the air and watches the edge shine pure and clean in the sallow lights. It feels good. It feels _right_. It feels like something he's been waiting for.

After all, he made certain promises.

Something cold and quiet moves behind him. A hand on his shoulder. _Do you want to die, Corvo?_ Cool lips against his ear, the unmistakable shape of a smile. Laughter echoes through the block, through a primal darkness the dimensions of which he can sense but can't begin to comprehend.

_Do you want to kill?_

_Why don't we find out._

_This will be so_ very _interesting._


End file.
